from the on-the-civil-liberties-beat dept

It's rather intimidating doing Techdirt's Favorites of the Week just two weeks after Jennifer Hoelzer's much-read favorites post, as that broke new ground on the NSA's efforts to obscure how it spies on Americans. But seeing as how that's what I've been neck deep in myself -- covering civil liberties at emptywheel.net -- there'll certainly be a lot of continuity. Because the stories of the week still focus on NSA's inability to offer credible answers about its surveillance programs.

Consider the empty reassurances NSA Director Keith Alexander gave to Stanford Professor Jennifer Granick about the NSA's surveillance reported by Techdirt here. Roughly three weeks ago, Alexander assured her she'd feel better about the Section 215 phone dragnet once she saw the Primary Order. But then earlier this week, James Clapper's office finally released the October 3, 2011 FISC opinion on Section 702 that not only revealed the NSA was collecting and using up to 56,000 US personal communications a year in violation of the Fourth Amendment, but that,

Contrary to the government's repeated assurances, NSA had been routinely running queries of the metadata using querying terms that did not meet the required standard for querying. The Court concluded that this requirement has been "so frequently and systemically violated that it can fairly be said that this critical element of the overall ... regime has never functioned effectively."

That ruling was released as part of ODNI's roll-out of ... a Tumblr! Somehow, none of the people with the word "intelligence" in their titles realized the URL "http://icontherecord.tumblr.com/" invites jokes about the Intelligence Community as the "I Con" community.

The "I Cons" spent most of their rollout conference call refusing to answer three different questions about a WSJ report published the night before, which described how between the telecoms -- which do a first scan on data -- and the NSA, they have "the capacity to reach roughly 75% of all U.S. Internet traffic in the hunt for foreign intelligence." But then by the end of the day, they had released a sheet purporting to provide the "facts" but instead playing on the words "sift through and have unfettered access to" in an attempt to distract from their underlying confirmation that in fact the WSJ's reporting was correct.

Meanwhile, we've had conflicting reports about how much abuse there really still is. By the end of the week, even Bloomberg was reporting what Techdirt did earlier: that there are, in fact, intentional abuses. Bloomberg appears to base that claim on a still-classified (and unleaked) "new report by the NSA's inspector general." That report says there are "an average of one case per year over 10 years of intentionally inappropriate actions by people with access to the NSA's vast electronic surveillance systems." But the audit report released last week actually shows that 9 to 20% of violations are "lack of due diligence" -- which means the person didn't follow the rules; that probably works out to about 300 deliberate rule violations annually, not one. As Barton Gellman has explained,

If they are performing the mission that the NSA wants them to perform, and nevertheless overstep their legal authority, make unauthorized interceptions or searches or retentions or sharing of secret information, that is not abuse.

But these serious issues were not without comic relief. Wednesday night we started getting reports that Obama's (or James Clapper's?) "outsider" "independent" review panel was actually going to be staffed by four people with White House or Intelligence Community backgrounds: former White House homeland security czar Richard Clarke, the very recently retired CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell, former White House adviser Peter Swire, and former White House regulatory czar Cass Sunstein. While I'm happy Swire's on the list, not only did they not appoint a single technologist to address an issue that is all about technology, but Sunstein's appointment seems designed primarily to make us all believe the NSA's repeated lies.

from the tooling-around dept

For this week's awesome stuff post, we decided to look at some multi-tool offerings. There are actually a lot of multi-tool crowdfunding projects out there, with a bunch of them just being a single simple multi-tool. This post is certainly not meant to be a comprehensive listing of all, but rather to pick a few that were a little different and distinct.

First up are the Ti2 Para-Biners, combining the concept of a multitool with a carabiner. It seriously looks indestructible and would probably be the last carabiner you'd ever need.

These don't go cheap, as you're starting at $43 for the cheapest model, but there certainly appears to be quite a bit of demand for these things. With about three weeks left to go, the project has already zoomed way past its $10,000 target to around $60,000.

Next up, we've got the Silverback 12+ function multi-tool and minimalist wallet. There are a lot of card-style multitools out there, but this one definitely has an awful lot built into a single tool plus, on top of that, the ability to double as a minimalist wallet. Of course, if you use it as a wallet, it might make it a little more annoying to make use of the tools part, since you may have to dump the contents of your wallet first.

I kind of like the fact that they kept the pricing on this one pretty straightforward and simple, rather than having a ton of different tiers. And, frankly, it seems pretty cheap for what you get -- so I'm a bit surprised that its only raised around $1,000 of the $3,500 they're seeking. There's still a month and a half to go, and if the project creator can actually drum up some attention (kids: don't forget, you need to market your Kickstarter too), it seems likely to go over the target, though perhaps not by that much.

I already mentioned how many card-style multi-tools there are out there, but the offering from Tuls is interesting in that it's actually a set of four different mutli-tool cards, so you can have a nice set. The names of the four tools -- Roul, Stan, Lucy and Opie are all kind of amusing once you figure out the main purpose of each tool (though, the Opie tool seems almost too minimalist here, and it makes you wonder why the Stan tool can't do what the Opie tool does).

While I like the concept of a multi-tool card set, this one seems kind of pricey. To actually get all four, you're spending over $80. You can buy them in smaller combinations as well, and lots of people have. They're already pushing $30,000 -- way over their target of $1,500, so apparently lots and lots of other people disagree with me on the pricing being too high.

Finally, we've got one that isn't quite as portable, but is effectively a basic toolbox in one device, called the Zeus multi-tool. Take the basic concept of a pocket knife, and expand it to larger tools -- giving you a fold out saw, pliers, knife, adjustable screwdriver with 16 different sized bits, a hammer, a measuring tape and a detachable light. The thing that surprised me, slightly, was the hammer. I can't recall seeing multi-tools that include a hammer. While they do spell out the dimensions, it would be nice to actually see it in someone's hand, as that would give a better sense of how "handy" it actually is. From the description, I wonder if it's too big, but without any images, it's a little tough to tell. Also, I've been growing wary of projects that advertise how they've received a patent. I'd much rather someone is focusing on executing and building a great product, not spending times with their lawyers and getting a weapon to sue other innovators over.

So far the Zeus is really struggling, raising just a few hundred dollars, despite the project being open for over a month. With less than three weeks to go, it's unclear if it'll make its $1,300 goal -- but since it's an IndieGoGo flex funds campaign, all money committed will go to the project's owner. It's unclear if he'll still be able to produce the devices if there really are only a few orders (as I write this there are only six orders), so buyer beware. Either way, perhaps rather than getting a patent, they should have focused a bit more on marketing this and getting the word out.

I hope everyone enjoys their weekend -- and if you've got some home improvement projects to do, make sure you've got the right tools for the job.